Doctors have one of the highest incomes among American professionals but to become a doctor in the United States, you will have to spend a huge amount of money. The average American doctor begins his/her career with a debt of $200,000 which takes more than a decade to repay in most cases. That means you will have to pay a large amount from your income during the first decade of your career.
Thankfully, halfway through this period, your income would begin increasing and that will reduce the debt load on you but by this time you would also begin acquiring other debts. When the question of getting a long term individual disability insurance (IDI) policy arises, most young doctors say that they are covered under their employers’ group long term policy. The problem is, this policy falls way short of covering you against the risk of disability as it pervades.
What kind of risks are you up against?
It is necessary for you to know the kind of risks you are facing in terms of disability that can prevent you from working partially or fully to earn a livelihood. Studies have shown that one out every four millennials in America is likely to suffer from some kind of disability in his/her lifetime. It is important for you to understand the scope of high limit disability insurance services.
If you are under the impression that driving safely and not living dangerously will prevent any kind of disability affecting you, you couldn’t be further away from reality. Accidents cause just 10% of disabilities while 90% are caused by illnesses and if you consider the current Covid pandemic as an instance, anybody can fall ill. It will be a mistake not to get a doctors disability insurance policy.
You need a high limits long term individual policy
Early on in your career, your income, although much higher than the national average, is still low enough to get you adequate cover from your individual physicians disability insurance. As you grow in your profession, your income doubles or even triples by the time you start earning mid-career level incomes.
That is when it becomes difficult to get adequate coverage from your individual healthcare professionals disability insurance policy. The reason for this is the cap on the maximum benefit payable that the insurance carriers apply. Hence, for large incomes even an IDI policy cannot get you adequate coverage.
Optimize your disability cover for high income
The only way to increase your coverage limit is to optimize your healthcare professionals insurance with a high limit cover. You can do that by choosing the right riders in your policy and also stack your risk cover with additional group long term insurance at nominal cost.
It is not really easy to optimize your insurance cover because you will have to balance the cover for maximum adequate benefits at minimum cost. That requires industry knowledge and experience which a disability insurance broker, who is a professional connected to the industry, has inadequate measure. It is advisable that you hire the services of a reliable broker to optimize your disability cover.